An estimated 100 million Americans live with chronic pain, but new research suggests that many of these patients receive insufficient treatment.
Researchers found a need for multidisciplinary approaches to pain treatment that involves both patients' perspectives and the outcomes they hope to achieve, Indiana University reported.
"We learned that sufficient clinical research doesn't exist to show physicians how best to treat chronic pain in adults, many of whom suffer from multiple health problems," said the founding director of the Indiana University Center for Aging Research and Regenstrief Institute investigator Dr. Christopher Callahan, who served on the seven-member panel.
One of the most common solutions to chronic pain is the use of opioids, but there appears to be an absence of pain assessment and insufficient data on these drugs' characteristics involved in these prescriptions.
"Are opioids the appropriate treatment? And, if so, at what dose and for how long? Could other, less dangerous treatments work for some people? The panel found that, in spite of what many clinicians believe, there is no evidence that pain narcotics -- with their risks of dependency, addiction and death -- are an effective long-term pain treatment. More research is needed to guide effective care for chronic, often debilitating, pain," Callahan said.
The researchers called attention to the importance of the emotional impacts of chronic pain, further supporting the idea that pain treatment should be tailored to the individual. The team also highlighted the fact that opioid overdoses have been increasing in the U.S., and it could be useful for physicians to prescribe smaller quantities of the drugs.
"In educating their patients, providers might also tip the balance of their cautions about these drugs to highlight that they are important drugs with important dangers to both the patient and those who might obtain them accidentally or illegally. At the same time, the panel heard testimony that patients who responsibly use these medications should not be treated like criminals," Callahan concluded.
The findings were published in a recent edition of the Annals of Internal Medicine.
